November

November's pictures.  (somewhat in order)

Jubilee likes to diaper her babies.  

Brandon was chasing the kids around the house.  Hehehe

She LOVES reading to her dolls.

The kids were doing dishes and I hear, "A mouse!"
Thankfully it was outside eating the porch crumbs.  

Going to a Reformation Party with our church friends.
We look like we belong in the reformation era, right?  hehehehe 

playing dinosaurs with her brother (or waiting on him to come back and play some more. He had to go potty, I think.) 

Another friend along for the ride

Brothers are so much fun to watch.

We got snow and had to run around in it for a minute.

I let them sleep in the playroom one night.  Here's Jubilee all little and alone wishing her counterpart friend was big enough to buddy up with her already like the other kids.

They naturally group up like this.  

She looks so little with that binky.  I can't believe how much she's grown since November!!!!

I let them listen to music on our ipod and mini mp3 player

Typical Maddie face

She looks so old here with the light and her hair or something.

Did I tell you about the day they called 911?
Yeah.  That happened.  We'd talked about it before in school.  It was part of the life skills stuff they should know.  We role played answering the questions like "what's your address" and stuff.  Then I stressed to them that they could ONLY call 911 if Mommy or Daddy was too hurt to do it themselves.  A week or so later, I was using the restroom and getting dressed and the phone rang.  Since I was on the toilet, I didn't run to answer it.  By the time I'd gotten dressed and gotten 2 diapers changed and a few kids dressed and poured cereal, I'd forgotten about it.
Until the knock on the door.  I glanced out and saw a police man standing kind of back and to the side of the door with his hand on his gun and my heart started flip flopping.  At first I thought maybe something was going on in the neighborhood that they wanted to warn me to stay inside or something, but then he was asking me about a hang up 911 call from MY house.
When we finally decided that it was the kids who had done it, he called them all over and gave them a second lesson on NOT calling 911 unless Mommy or Daddy couldn't... and then he gave them all stickers.  Yay.  That wasn't exactly the kind of "reward" I was thinking they needed for that phone call, but whatever.
None of them confessed to it directly, but a few days later, all of them seemed sure Noah had done it.  I'm not sure I'm convinced because I'm not sure Noah knew his numbers well enough to do it at that point.

Emma drew a Panda Butterfly.  (or maybe it's a butterfly panda)

getting bigger every day 

Jubilee loves dolls

Brandon gave me this Kirsten for Christmas.  But he couldn't wait until Christmas to give it to me.  ;)

Typical tired Madeleine

The girls wanted me to do their hair like Kirsten. 

The boys discovered we were taking pictures with Kirsten and wanted to take pictures too...only, Noah didn't want just any picture taken of him.

Much better.

Kirsten hair

We decorated for Christmas a little before Thanksgiving this year.  :)

My favorite time of the year to be in the kitchen after dark

 I get a hot chocolate or a tea and sit by the fire and look at the lights.  :)  

One day for school, we got some of our dolls and dinosaurs and dogs and Woody and baby sister...

and we made a school room.

 Then I sat at the top and had them take turns teaching me (reviewing) lessons they'd already done.  Abby was teaching here and the others were preparing their lessons.

Isaiah read us Beowulf.
Here's an example page so you know the kind of words he was reading.  I took a picture of the pages I had him read on my phone so I could read with him from my place at the top of the stairs in our school house.  He did a good job.  He's been a quick study for reading.

"I have a sword!"

Typical Noah

typical Isaiah

I let them each decorate their own gingerbread cookie 

(I think Isaiah ate his before we got to him with the camera.  Ooops!)

Jubilee loves Kirsten.  Often, she'll bring her to me.  Sometimes, I'll be cooking or something and I'll come back to my chair to find her tucked into the corner.  This time, Kirsten also had Peekaboo and a Koala to keep her company.

"Do you love my dolly?"
"Uh huh."  (yes)

"Is it mommy's dolly?"

The girls decided Maddie needed to wear the hotdog for a while

There's this tv show I watch sometimes.  It's called Dr. Who.
In the show, this guy gets into a police call box (like a telephone box) and flies all across space and time defending earth from bad aliens.
The kids think this is a neat show.  They are playing Dr. Who.
On the Show, the Tardis (time machine) is bigger on the inside than the outside...
Their Tardis is bigger on the inside too... I think....

Jubilee looks thrilled with the game.

Thanksgiving.

This is the day Maddie discovered she could scoot on her tummy.  The day before, she wouldn't move if I put her on the floor.  She was just stuck.  Then, suddenly, she was scooting across the room.

"Hey, look!  Stuff to mess with!!!"

Pumpkin pie face

Then like 2 days later, she started pushing up onto her hands and knees.

"Don't mind me.  I'm working hard to spit up all over Mommy and Daddy's bed."

Look at her little rolly thigh.  hahaha  The girls put a temporary tattoo on it

She loves dolls.  I can't tell you that enough.
The doll stroller is under all of these dolls.

Noah plays dolls with the girls a bit more than Isaiah at this particular stage in the boys' lives.  This doll is one of Abby's that Noah calls "Charlie" when he plays with it.  Emma doesn't like the dolls swapping gender like this, but Abby says, "When Noah plays with it it can be a boy!"

 This is Emma's face the whole time Noah plays with "Charlie."

 You can tell Abby's so worried about her doll being a boy.

Me and Jubilee.  I didn't notice it until just now, but we're kind of wearing matching colors.  :)

My Texan can't handle the cold.  You can't see it but he also has a space heater pointed at him on full blast.

Family outing

We ended up at the mall.  I don't remember how that happened. It wasn't where we set out to go.
We visited the lego store (that I didn't take a picture of)
then we visited... 

The magical red building where the American Girl Dolls are.  (this is still the mall, but you have to get into it from outside.)

 Jubilee is really into Kit right now and she wanted to try on the girl sized Kit hat.

 Jubilee isn't quite ready for an American girl yet.  We're considering it for Christmas or something.  In the mean time, she got a mini Kit.  :)  She loves little dolls so this was just perfect for her.

 Unfortunately, she took off Kit's clothes immediately after this and we haven't seen them since.  I'm hoping she didn't throw them away or something.

The girls each got some clothes or something from the American Girl store and the boys got some legos.    

Coloring 

Did you know you can take mineral oil (baby oil or baby oil lotion in my case)
and put it on colored pencils?
(You can also do this with mineral spirits.  I had both and tried both and got such similar results that I'm sticking with the baby oil, because I feel like it's a bit safer should the kids decide to ingest my art or something.)

Before:

After: (it's dry.  I just painted the oil on with a q-tip and it dried immediately.  This is how it looks.
It has a water-color feel to it.)

Cuddling

Emma made us supper one night.  She did basically everything by herself.
(I drained the noodles but that's really all I did.)
Mac and cheese and bar b que hotdogs.

We occasionally watch this cooking show called "chopped" where competitors compete to make the best dish.  The kids love this show.  They play chopped in the playroom.  When Emma was cooking, her judges were all lined up to watch her cook.

And at one point Judge Jubilee thought Emma was taking too long. 

Reading the Bible together before bed.

While the big kids are listening, these two are not.
Maddie was talking loudly at one point and Brandon said, "Baby, hush!" to which she squealed "Dada!!!!!"

Not the best pictures, really... 

Abby was putting little people by the windows and Maddie was snatching them out of the window and throwing them on the floor.   

Abby loves her Zoey 

Jubi loves my Kirsten

She wanted me to take a pictures of the curlies

I let the kids play with the camera one day.  They took a bunch of pictures of their dolls modeling different clothes.  Then I printed about 4 pages back and front and stapled them together to make their own "doll magazine."  :)
Here are some of their poses and clothing choices.  It's neat to see how they envision their little world. 

Or course Cupcake and Peek A Boo had to be in the magazine too.